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Danny Glover is trying to throw his weight around. He said yesterday that he will not speak at this year’s commencement convocation unless a labor dispute with custodians is resolved.
This would be the second year in a row that someone did not speak because of a labor issue. State Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez dropped out at the last minute last year for a similar reason and we couldn’t get other Democratic politicians either.
And just because we already said that the way of choosing convocation speakers is horrible, we’ll do it again:
bq. The Senior Class Council, or the Californians, was responsible for selecting a commencement speaker and have said that they were careful to select a speaker outside the political arena in order to avoid the problem of speakers dropping out of ceremonies.
Guess that didn’t work out so well. Maybe next year we should try something a little more traditional, like paying for a speaker.
Speaker Will Not Cross Picket Lines [Daily Cal]
Comments:
May 2, 2007 at 1:59 am
I was commencement chairman in 2000 when we got then US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright to speak…given the nature of Berkeley, any person we get will elicit protestors of some sort. Danny Glover screwed Cal Seniors, there’s no doubt about that. I would have been furious if my commencement speaker had canceled out on me 10 days before the event. Glover fully knew of this labor dispute and if he had dropped out earlier, at least a replacement could have been found. With that said, the problem would easily been solved by inviting a non-Democrat to speak…any Republican will gladly cross the picket line instead of screwing Cal students.
May 1, 2007 at 10:44 am
It’s against University policy to pay for a speaker, just like it’s against University policy to give out honorary degrees. I’m pretty sure there would be lots of upset people who would protest against their taxpayer dollars being spent on some politician or celebrity speaking at Cal for 5 minutes.